Teething is probably the hardest milestone for baby and family to go through. From birth until 36 months old, little ones endure the pain and suffering of 20 emerging teeth! So this week, we dedicate our story to Mateo, who is in the process of having both his upper lateral incisors and canine baby teeth coming in. He is such a strong trouper, and once those four teeth fully emerge, his total teeth count will be up to 11! Little ones love looking at pictures of other babies, so what better way to practice counting skills in English and Spanish than to count the little teeth in these precious baby smiles? And at the end of the book, there's also a page with toothy tips and things to try to get your kids excited about caring for their teeth.  Teeth are actually a funny subject in our house, because both Maya and Mateo were born with teeth. Maya's fell out before we left the hospital, and Teo's just disappeared one day. They both were early teethers, too, and received their f...

 Francisco and I just celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. Our love story is a long story, and needs to be another post entirely, but to celebrate our anniversary, I'd like to share here with you our bilingual vows. From the very beginning, we knew we wanted to create a bilingual life together, and that started on the day we were married.  We had been to far too many bilingual weddings that were translated word for word, so as we were making decisions about our ceremony, we wanted to take the 45-minute Episcopal liturgy and divide up some sections in English and some sections in Spanish. Since we knew we would have friends and family in attendance who only spoke English, only spoke Spanish, and some who spoke both, we wanted to make sure both of our languages were represented without being exhaustively repetitive. So my dear friend and priest from Northeastern University led the English portion, and Francisco's dear friend and pastor from his childhood led the Spanish por...

It makes me so happy to see how much  Tea  loves books. At least once a day, he toddles over to the bookshelf in the corner of our living room and takes down a variety of books to read and look at all on his own. Twice this week it was too quiet in the house and I went looking for  Two , only to find him sitting on the  trampoline and flipping through the pages of a board book. Even tonight I heard him babbling to himself and saw him playing with his favorite peek-a-boo book!  As an educator and mama, I know just how important it is to read with children from birth, and I we can see already how early literacy exposure has had a positive effect on Mateo's emotional and mental development. Even when the TV is on, he barely pays attention and instead would rather entertain himself with books. Three years ago when Maya was just an infant, I connected with Jane Cohen with the Early Childhood Alliance of Framingham, when I attended a mom's group at the Framingham Publ...

With a day off from school on Monday, I really wanted to take the kids to do something fun in the morning. But since we are in COVID-19 times, there is not a plethora of activities to choose from like there used to be. It made me so nostalgic for this time last year, when my year-long maternity leave had just begun, and we filled each day with story times, playgroups, and had so many options of toddler programming! Community Kangaroo is glaringly vacant nowadays, but there was one activity posted for today. A story walk put together by the Franklin Public Library through the  DelCarte Conservation Area. So that is where we went, and we had the best time! It was the perfect fall day to read Kenard Pak's "Goodbye Summer Hello Autumn" in the woods. This is a beautifully illustrated story of a young girl as she watches the world around her prepare for a new season, from the animals to the trees, to the wind and the air!  The whole walk took us about an hour, because I stopped...